I. —ST. PIERRE, 1887.
ONE returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season
is lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been
happy to secure one even in a rather retired street,—so steep
that it is really dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest
one lose one's balance and tumble right across the town. It is
not a fashionable street, the Rue du Morne Mirail; but, after
all, there is no particularly fashionable street in this
extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the better
one's chance to see something of its human nature.
One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door
neighbor, who keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin
Martinique cigars of which a stranger soon becomes fond), and who
can relate more queer stories and legends of old times in the
island than anybody else I know of. Manm-Robert is yon màchanne
lapacotte, a dealer in such cheap articles of food as the poor
live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables, manioc-flour,
"macadam " (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt fish—diri
épi coubouyon lamori), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably bring
her the largest profit—they are all bought up by the békés.
Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever anyone in the
neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and
very often cures,—as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of
medicinal herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But
for these services she never accepts any
remuneration: she is a
sort of Mother of the poor in immediate vicinity. She helps
everybody, listens to everybody's troubles, gives everybody some
sort of consolation, trusts everybody, and sees a great deal of
the thankless side of human nature without seeming to feel any
the worse for it. Poor as she must really be she appears to have
everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything to her
neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought bad-luck
to lend. And, finally, if anyybody is afraid of being
bewitched (
quimboisé) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with
something that will keep the bewitchment away. …
